Sol Sanders Archive

A long-overdue Asian NATO, thanks to the N. Korean
bomb-throwers?

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In Asia, however, Mr. Dulles’ vision exceeded his grasp. He ran up against, among other problems, Washington having foisted unilateral disarmament on the defeated but then grateful Japanese. It took the 1950 North Korean invasion of South Korea followed by massive Chinese Communist intervention to disabuse Washington of that strategy, rapidly to come to see Japan as keystone to halting Asian Communism. Economic strategies worked; both Japan, and later South Korea, roared into new prosperity and close trade relations with the U.S. — and each other.

But the sticking point has always been getting Japanese and South Koreans into multilateral political and military collaboration.

Not even an erstwhile World War II military bureaucrat, Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, and a South Korean military dictator who started his career as a Japanese army officer candidate, Park Chung Hee, could quite pull it off in 1958.

A half-century of Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula had left a bitterness easily exploited, especially by Pyongyang and the South Korean left. Nor could Japan assuage the hard feelings by acting as the handmaiden — technologically, organizationally and financially — of South Korea's economic miracle.

Serendipitously, a decade of failed “sunshine policy” in which Seoul left-of-center governments tried to buy off Pyongyang, now has been followed by a hard-nosed conservative President Lee Myung-Bak. [It’s ironic, too, that fruition takes place under a Tokyo government, many of whose leaders once sided with 1960s anti-U.S. student rioting who forced cancellation of an Eisenhower visit.]

In Japan, an amorphous amalgam of guilt and xenophobia has blocked assimilation of an official one million Korean ethnics — many of whose forebears came as indentured labor — but many more of whom anonymously have drifted into Japanese society. Although ethnic Koreans have starred in the arts and sports, exclusion and discrimination against “Zainichi” [Japan born Koreans] festers, until recently enhancing Pyongyang’s Japan smuggling and currency operations. [Tokyo still permits government-supported Korean language schools to use a Pyongyang curriculum.]

The recent photograph of Sec. of State Hillary Clinton standing between the two Asian foreign ministries conferring in Washington sets the new tone. So did Japanese military observers at recent U.S.-South Korean exercises in the Yellow Sea, followed by Seoul’s observers with the largest exercises ever between Japanese and American forces in the Japan Sea [Korea’s Eastern Sea]. For the moment, Japanese, South Korean and American diplomats are presenting a united front against Beijing's suggestion of more dawdling talks with the North after the latest exchange of unpleasantries.

It’s still a long way from a strategy but increasingly China’s refusal to pressure North Korea to halt its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction — and even Beijing-Pyongyang weapons collusion — becomes a central issue for all three countries.

Although all this has caught Beijing’s attention as reflected in the government media, it is still a long way from the kind of alliance which stood up to the Soviets in Europe. And Beijing has trumps to play. Although Tokyo and Seoul are major U.S. trading partners, China’s subsidized assembly and reexport of their multinationals’ products — mostly to U.S. and EU markets — has been a godsend in the face of rising domestic costs. And with China’s growing raw materials imports pacing commodities markets, economic pressures from China will have their effect. [The Chinese, of course, can overdo it: when they blocked essential “rare earth” shipments to Tokyo recently after the altercation with the Japanese in the Senkaku Islands, alternate sources — even at higher prices — began popping up to challenge their monopoly.]

Nor is Mr. Dulles’ old dream of tying the Southeast Asian nations to such an alliance likely soon despite recent Washington interventions on their side against outrageous Chinese claims in the South China Sea. No one seemed to notice the first reaction from the Philippines, once the U.S.’ main Asian partner, was to warn Washington to back off — a reflection of Manila’s on and off effort to make a deal with Beijing

Still, a Japan-Korean alliance with American support would be a powerful one, including their huge unexploited potential with increasing U.S. “dual-use” integration. A lengthily negotiated free trade agreement [FTA] between Seoul and Washington still faces Congressional scrutiny from beef producers although Detroit’s opposition has abated. Tokyo has begun to think about an FTA with the U.S. or on an even broader Pacific scale matching Beijing’s aggressive regional trade and investment tactics.

With no real solution to the problem of North Korea in sight, and growing suspicions of Chinese aims, these moves will be as important to Washington as to the new, tentative Northeast Asian allies.